[AZW] ✓ Mildred Pierce | BY ✓ James M. Cain

Mildred Pierce had gorgeous legs, a way with a skillet, and a bone deep core of toughness and determination She used those attributes to survive a divorce in 1940s America with two children and to claw her way out of poverty, becoming a successful businesswoman But Mildred also had two weaknesses a yen for shiftless men and an unreasoning devotion to her monstrous daughMildred Pierce had gorgeous legs, a way with a skillet, and a bone deep core of toughness and determination She used those attributes to survive a divorce in 1940s America with two children and to claw her way out of poverty, becoming a successful businesswoman But Mildred also had two weaknesses a yen for shiftless men and an unreasoning devotion to her monstrous daughter.Out of these elements, Cain created a novel later made into a film noir classic of acute social observation and devastating emotional violence and a heroine whose ambitions and sufferings are never less than recognizable.Narrated by Christine Williams.

Mildred Pierce Mildred Pierce had gorgeous legs a way with a skillet and a bone deep core of toughness and determination She used those attributes to survive a divorce in s America with two children and to cla

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Mildred Pierce would have made a great guest for Dr Phil or Oprah.During the Great Depression, Mildred s husband has been moping about since the collapse of his real estate business and takes up with another woman until Mildred has enough and throws him out That takes care of one problem but leaves her to support their two daughters herself With no work experience, Mildred finally takes a job as a waitress that she finds humiliating, but eventually her parlays what she learns and her baking skil [...]

Mildred Pierce divorces her out of work, philandering husband and struggles to find a way to support herself and her two daughters Too bad she attracts lazy scoundrels like a magnet and one of her daughters is a hellionMildred Pierce is the tale of the titular character s obsessive devotion to her wicked nigh sociopathic daughter and her wrong choices in men Cain guides Mildred and her fabulous gams from one setback to the next, either from Veda or one of her douchebag suitors.The writing is goo [...]

Often a finicky reader like myself will coordinate novel reading with leisurely travel It is the exquisite pairing of books at beaches, at hotel balconies, at restaurants that forever, at least in my own experience, binds the two together in a truly surreal Dadaistic effort For instance, I remember fondly reading Catcher in the Rye at a desolate Mexican beach, The Tesseract on my way to Mazatlan, The Exorcist, Sphere The Beach all making themselves unforgettable with the incessant pounding of wa [...]

I d include this book in the genre I like to call, Middle Class White Women Have A Really Bad Time Other works in this genre include, A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams and The Awakening by Kate Chopin I seem to really enjoy this genre for some reason I came to Mildred Pierce for two reasons, one the Joan Crawford film and two look that s my name Overall I did enjoy this book You actually care about the characters, especially Mildred, which I find quite rare The relationship between [...]

Well done story that paints a realistic portrayal of a woman s struggle for success during the depression era.This story gives me thoughts of a previous read novel Revolutionary Road by Yates which also was adapted into big screen well They really are both of similar tones A decline of the family structure, loss of possessions dear to them in this world, a really heart warming and life learning story Is there light at the end of the tunnel for the main protagonist Mildred You are taken through [...]

Wow, freaking wow I had no idea I would be sucked into this novel the way I was I couldn t put it down I know that phrase is overused, but seriously, I couldn t put it down And when I did have to abandon it for life and work, I couldn t wait to get back to it This is so different than Cain s other noir novels where sex and violence, scheming, backstabbing and a dead body feature so prominently Unlike Double Indemnity or The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce is a full length novel that t [...]

The hand that holds the money cracks the whip Mildred PierceImagine my disappointment in reading page after page of this novel, written by the author of such salacious noir thrillers as The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, and discovering no murders have been committed Not a drop of blood And Cain has a reputation for writing about women that some see as disrespectful or even misogynous Babes, floozies, tramps, prostitutes, con artists In this novel, that might be described as li [...]

If there s one thing I m taking away from reading this, it s that bad things happen to good people Unfortunately, that goes both ways I was surprised by how this novel just sucked me in, even though there was so much to get frustrated about Mildred Pierce is the tale of a woman living during the Great Depression who is trying to provide for her two daughters after getting divorced from her cheating husband The problems don t end there, as there is money to be earned and some proper family issues [...]

James M Cain s Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice have always been two of my favorite crime novels While Mildred Pierce was turned into something of a crime story in the movie starring Joan Crawford, the book is the fairly straight forward story of a California woman who struggles to make a life for herself and her daughter, Veda, during the years of the Great Depression.As the book opens, Mildred throws her lazy, unfaithful husband out on his ear and become the single mother of [...]

What an odd, sad little book this is I quite thought I d have no trouble relating to Mildred at the beginning I got hooked on, She was a little given to rehearshing things in her mind, and having imaginary triumphs over people who has upset her in one way and another, because I do that all the time But she ends up being such a weak, small minded jerk that I lost any sympathy I d had for her view spoiler Mostly I feel sorry for her youngest daughter Ray, who gets about three pages worth of play, [...]

So there s a restaurant a few blocks from my place bearing the novel s namesake It made Canadian national news, and then the US Today show Not for its pies, not for its cuisine Mildred Pierce is a yuppie establishment, serving white fusion By white fusion I mean the sad attempt at hodgepodge described by some whitey white liberal college students searching for cultural identity Irish, British, Swedish, and German Meh What made it international gossip was that this highbrow eatery has large bathr [...]

I picked up Mildred Pierce without realizing the book was written by the same author who penned The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, now after finishing Mildred Pierce, I ve decided to put the latter two books to the top of my To Read list.Mildred Pierce is a young woman who had recently divorced her unfaithful husband and now she must look after her two daughters at the time of The Great Depression, and life isn t easy for a single mom of that time Mildred s struggle had been ma [...]

Of course, I saw the movie first Mildred Pierce is one of my favorites, and I ll watch it every time it s on TCM, because Veda, Mildred s daughter, is such an fabulously unmitigated bitch Then I found out the movie was adapted from this book, written by the same guy who wrote The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity Really, I don t have to write a review the book s credentials recommend it without my help, don t they But I ll write one, anyway.This book is dark One of the reasons Cain [...]

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this It was like a melodramatic soap opera dated 1930s The things parents do for their childrend ungrateful ones, too I felt like I d been transported back in time and I appreciated the author s knowledge on subjects like running a business and art music I think it was better than the movie, surprisingly Let s get stinko

This is a story about a mother s unhealthy relationship with her daughter and the mother s obsessive desire to do anything to gain love and acceptance from the daughter Veda was a very self centered and ungrateful daughter She s the type of daughter who takes all the credit for her success but would blame her mother for her pitfalls Her mother bent over backwards trying to please Veda but Veda was the daughter from hell The book is a total family tragedy and a definite classic James Cain is an e [...]

Set during depression era America, this family drama takes the reader deep into inner suburbia where a housewife, mother, and businesswoman can echo noir with the best of them.Mildred Pierce is the type of book I imagine modern day authors such as Megan Abbott writing It s seeped in darkness that bubbles to the surface yet never really shows its intentions Rather using a subliminal tone delivered through deep characterization and a slight of hand twist in plot direction Veda, Mildred s daughter [...]

With a HBO miniseries of Mildred Peirce Staring Kate Winslet, Guy Pearce Evan Rachel Wood coming up soon I thought I needed to read this James M Cain classic The story of Mildred Pierce follows the titular mother who, during the Great Depression finds herself separated from her husband, opening a restaurant of her own, and falling in love with a new man, all the while trying to earn her daughter s love and respect.Sounds like a nice little story, right Wrong James M Cain brings his famous noir s [...]

This book is by far the best James M Cain book I ve read After reading Double Indemnity and The Postman Always Rings Twice, I was curious about how Cain would translate his hardboiled crime style into a story about a 1930s housewife who is down on her luck but cannot give up, due in part to her aristocratic, haughty daughter I ve always been interested in that decade, and this book did to illuminate it and what it might have been like to be a woman in that time than any other novel for me Among [...]

They spoke quickly, as though they were saying things that scalded their mouths, and had to be cooled with spit This is a train wreck of a story Mildred is subtly twisted, with a low grade desperation to her that kept me turning pages The combination of her drive and her aloofness made her interesting and unpredictable, and the that is revealed about her relationship with her daughter, the things get dark and ugly It always came back to the same thing She was afraid of Veda, of her snobbery, h [...]

I read a description of Mildred Pierce somewhere that described it as a hard boiled novel I wasn t exactly sure what that meant But if all hard boiled novels are as juicy and good as Mildred Pierce, then I m hard boiled Mildred Pierce had me hooked almost from the first page Dramatic and melodramatic, Dallas and Dynasty could be direct descendents of Mildred Pierce with the adultery and sultry affairs, the shady business deals, marriages for anything but love, and dames with great legs although [...]

Cain sure wrote a very character driven novel when he wrote Mildred Pierce Hard to forget these characters because they epitomize dysfunctional Mildred, divorced in the early 40 s when divorce was a word whispered and not spoken, has a penchant for worthless men Although competent and successful in starting her own business, Mildred could not manage a relationship that wasn t on sinking sand She sure knew how to pick shiftless and arrogant men And she also knew how to use these men to her advant [...]

Like many others, I saw the recent Kate Winslet mini series Mildred Pierce, and finally saw the film starring Joan Crawford on Mother s Day weekend, so I decided to read the book to further explore this story that deviates from many clich s of men, women, and children s interpersonal relationships.First, I like period stories that take in as a whole the economic effects, which is expected during the Great Depression Mr Cain not only explained it from the viewpoint of the lead character Mildred, [...]